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An essay concerning human understanding

  
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[title page]
  
To The Right Honourable Lord Thomas,
  
Epistle to the Reader

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Introduction An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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Book I Neither Principles Nor Ideas Are Innate
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Book II Of Ideas
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Book III Of Words
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Chapter I Of Words or Language in General
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Chapter II Of the Signification of Words
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Chapter III Of General Terms
  
1. The greatest part of words are general terms.
  
2. That every particular thing should have a name for itself is impossible.
  
3. And would be useless, if it were possible.
  
4. A distinct name for every particular thing, not fitted for enlargement of knowledge.
  
5. What things have proper names, and why.
  
6. How general words are made.
  
7. Shown by the way we enlarge our complex ideas from infancy.
  
8. And further enlarge our complex ideas, by still leaving out properties contained in them.
  
9. General natures are nothing but abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones.
  
10. Why the genus is ordinarily made use of in definitions.
  
11. General and universal are creatures of the understanding, and belong not to the real existence of things.
  
12. Abstract ideas are the essences of genera and species.
  
13. They are the workmanship of the understanding, but have their foundation in the similitude of things.
  
14. Each distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence.
  
15. Several significations of the word Essence.
  
Real essences.
  
Nominal essences.
  
16. Constant connexion between the name and nominal essence.
  
17. Supposition, that species are distinguished by their real essences, useless.
  
18. Real and nominal essence the same in simple ideas and modes, different in substances.
  
19. Essences ingenerable and incorruptible.
  
20. Recapitulation.
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Chapter IV Of the Names of Simple Ideas
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Chapter V Of the Names of Mixed Modes and Relations
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Chapter VI Of the Names of Substances
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Chapter VII Of Particles
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Chapter VIII Of Abstract and Concrete Terms
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Chapter IX Of the Imperfection of Words
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Chapter X Of the Abuse of Words
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Chapter XI Of the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections and Abuses of Words
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Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability

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1. The greatest part of words are general terms.

All things that exist being particulars, it may perhaps be thought reasonable that words, which ought to be conformed to things, should be so too,--I mean in their signification: but yet we find quite the contrary. The far greatest part of words that make all languages are general terms: which has not been the effect of neglect or chance, but of reason and necessity.

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